I said, “I never looked at it from an animal’s point of view before.”
“You’re damn right. The realization about how the food cycle really works flashed into my brain one night. The vegetarians of the world? If animals were in charge, every two legged tofu humper would be gutted, jointed and deep-fried in about the time it takes to watch a couple of episodes of Wild Kingdom. “
“Wholesale slaughter,” I suggested.
“Jesus, you know it. Culinary anarchy. And there’s nothing a vegetarian hates more than looking stupid. The way it came to me was, I imagined myself out sailing and what would happen if I fell overboard and couldn’t get back to the boat. The damn fish would think they’d died and gone to heaven, man. We’re talking feeding frenzy. And then I pictured myself visiting a farm, nobody around but me and Mr. Zamboni and the two of us have a heart attack near the hog pen. Jesus Christ, what an ugly scene! The cloven-hoofed scum were on me like red sauce on frijoles.”
He was shaking his head… yes, he’d given the subject a lot of thought. “Fair’s fair, man, that’s what I say. They’d swallow me down like beer nuts, so what makes me better than them? Not that I plan to eat meat regularly. No. Only when, say, there’s fresh pompano available or a really outstanding piece of beef.”
“Selective vegetarianism. That actually makes a little bit of sense.”
“A way of paying tribute to all life forms.”
“Sure. Why avoid something just because it tastes great?”
His smile illustrated tolerance. “That’s my point And by the way, I was kidding about the beef. I draw the line at anything they didn’t gather and eat on Gilligan’s Island. Unknowingly, those seven stranded castaways pioneered the recipe for a healthy, happy life.”
Tomlinson went on to explain that the professor wasn’t the only one who was ahead of his time. I listened and nodded along, saying, “Uh-huh, Uh-huh. Yeah, sure. Ginger and Mary Ann, you bet.” I almost asked, “So what was wrong with the skipper?” but decided screw it, never ask what you don’t really care about knowing.
When Tomlinson gets on a subject like that, something that’s strange and far off the charted byways, even I sometimes wonder if the man has all his faculties. But then he’ll say something so rock-solid reasonable or so insightful that I’m actually a little ashamed that his oddities continue to give me pause.
I’d ordered stone crab claws with lime wedges and a brick of garlic toast. As an appetizer I had the waitress bring grilled shrimp and slices of fresh mango. Tomlinson, who knows something about wine, ordered a bottle of cold Riesling from the snow country of southern Australia. He insisted that I try a glass with the shrimp. Not bad. We both peeled shrimp and sipped wine and talked about Gail Calloway while we waited for dinner.
I told him that, in my mind, three consecutive withdrawals of $40,000 suggested payments. And it was unlikely that any of those payments had been anticipated by Gail. The fact that the withdrawals were made only a couple of weeks apart indicated unconventional circumstances or an unconventional billing source. “If she was going to buy something for $120,000 and had the money, why not write a check for the whole sum?”
“Plus a big chunk of the money was transferred to other accounts,” he pointed out.
“Exactly.”
“That’s one reason I think it’s blackmail. I can just see some asshole deciding, okay, we sent one note or made one call and she sends us forty thousand. Nothing to it. So let’s keep writing notes or making calls until she stops sending money. Which is where the deposit slips come in.”
That’s what I wanted to hear about.
“Did you take a close look at all the information on those slips?” he asked. “I described them to my banker friend. What they actually are are receipts from wire transfers. There are ten slips total and the deposits are divided evenly among twelve numbered accounts.”
“You’re kidding me. I didn’t notice that.”
He was nodding. “Twelve different accounts for a total transfer of slightly less than one hundred and ninety-eight thousand dollars. The reason you didn’t realize there were so many accounts involved is because there are no individual names listed on the slips. I missed it, too. Just numbers.”
“I don’t know much about numbered accounts, and I’ve got one. An account in the Caymans. But there’s always a name associated, right?”
“Nope, I don’t think there has to be. It’s weird to us because American institutions, they’ve got a thing called the Banking Security Act. For someone to open an account, they have to provide creditable identification. In other words, there has to be a name attached to the account. It’s to put a crimp into money-laundering, among other things.”
“So you’re saying Gail’s money had to have been wired to a foreign bank.”
“Foreign banks, plural. I know where the money went because each of the wire receipts has a numerical code that corresponds to the bank where the money was sent. It doesn’t mean that the money has to leave the country. Miami’s got plenty of foreign-based banks. Among them are the Banco de Colombia and the National Bank of Panama.” Tomlinson used his fingers to pick up a slice of mango. “That’s where Gail Calloway’s money was wired.”
“Jackie Merlot spends most of his time outside the country,” I said, “Frank Calloway told me that.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, but wait till you hear the rest of it. After my banker friend translated the numerical codes, the first thing I asked him was why would anyone go to so much trouble? Why divide the money among twelve different accounts? The banker says the obvious: There must be twelve different people or businesses involved. But I don’t think so. You know what I think’s going on?”
“You’re still operating on the premise that Gail’s being blackmailed.”
“It’s making sense so far, right? See… the problem with blackmail is how to collect the money. Blackmailers and con men always get nailed when they pick up the ransom. Drop the money at X-spot, throw it out of a moving car, follow directions from phone booth to phone booth, it doesn’t matter. I don’t think anyone’s ever come up with a safe way to make an exchange like that.”
I said, “So?”
“So, I think the person who got Gail’s money is smart as hell, because I think they finally did it. Found a safe, untraceable way to get ransom money. What I think they did was set up these foreign accounts, probably used fake names to do it, but it doesn’t much matter because everything goes by a PIN number and they have no reason to return to those banks ever again.
“They have Gail wire her payments to the account number they’ve provided her with. Once the money’s been transferred, they can visit any ATM machine in the world and drain the accounts dry. They can tell her they’re in Lauderdale, just around the corner from her house when they’re actually on the other side of the earth. No way she can find out. Same with the feds-not if the blackmailer stays on the move. Pop the card in, punch in the PIN number and the cash comes shooting out in guaranteed unmarked bills. A week, two weeks later, the feds get a black-and-white picture from the ATM camera. Some dude or chick in a floppy hat and glasses and a scarf. What’s that gonna tell them?”
I said, “You figured all this out from the deposit slips.”
“No, from the fact that there were twelve numbered accounts on each slip. You’re the logical one. It was unlikely that twelve kidnappers were involved, so why have so many accounts? Answer: Keep the balances low enough so they can wipe out each account fast.”
“But even with the money in that many fake accounts,” I said, “it would still take awhile to drain it from ATMs.”
“Not really. Twenty-some days, that’s all. But what do the blackmailers care? There’s no rush, no way the feds can anticipate where they’ll be. Like I said, as long as they stay on the move. The way I figure it, it was so clean and easy, they probably got greedy, which is why Gail’s final transfer was for seventy-five thousand.